Maia

Our daughter Maia arrived into our lives after 13 years of marriage. All those years gave us plenty of time to talk about the names we liked and wanted for our daughter (we always knew we would have a girl). We talked about so many names during those years that by the time she finally came our minds went blank and we couldn't come up with a name we liked. One day, out of the blue my husband said "what about Maia?," and we both agreed it would make the perfect name because we just loved the sound of it. Then, I started looking into the Greek meaning of the name, which is 'mother', and the mythology around it. Maia was the eldest of the seven sisters, the Pleiades, and the mother of Hermes by Zeus. From the Enciclopedia Britanica:

Pleiades, in Greek mythology, the seven daughters of the Titan Atlas and the Oceanid Pleione: Maia, Electra, Taygete, Celaeno, Alcyone, Sterope, and Merope. They all had children by gods (except Merope, who married Sisyphus). The Pleiades eventually formed a constellation. One myth recounts that they all killed themselves out of grief over the death of their sisters, the Hyades. Another explains that after seven years of being pursued by Orion, a Boeotian giant, they were turned into stars by Zeus. Orion became a constellation, too, and continued to pursue the sisters across the sky.